Demand Reason

Posts Tagged ‘religion’

As of April of this year, some twenty states had enacted so-called “religious freedom” laws, with similar legislation pending in another half-dozen states. But why do states need such laws when the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion? The modern “religious freedom” movement, which took hold during the Clinton administration, was in response to a Supreme Court ruling in 1990 (“Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith“). The case “determined that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state…Read On…

Maybe it comes from the fact that I’m not religious. Maybe it comes from the fact that I don’t have deep-seated beliefs that I take “personally” when remarks I make are challenged. But, some people just need to chill out on Facebook, on Twitter, or whatever your social network of choice happens to be. If I challenge something you said in a Facebook status update, it’s a confrontation of that particular thought, not the entirety of you as a person. But if this “thought” is of religious nature, even if disguised as political, that’s where we get into the territory of the…Read On…

On the September 26th installment of Real Time on HBO, host Bill Maher used his “New Rules” segment to call out liberals who need a lesson on what liberals are supposed to stand for. “President Obama keeps insisting that ISIS is not Islamic,” said Maher. “If vast numbers of Muslims around the world believe — and they do — that humans deserve to die for merely holding a different idea, or drawing a cartoon, or writing a book, or eloping with the wrong person, not only does the Muslim world have something in common with ISIS, it has too much…Read On…

Speaking to a friendly, like-minded audience this past Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said there is no wall of separation between church and state. “I think the main fight is to dissuade Americans from what the secularists are trying to persuade them to be true: that the separation of church and state means that the government cannot favor religion over nonreligion,” Justice Scalia said. Ah, see, he’s trying to parse this in a way where he cannot be trapped. Because he is actually acknowledging that there is a separation of church and state, only according to Scalia, it doesn’t…Read On…

Those of us who accept the scientific consensus know there will be consequences of inaction on climate change. But instead of our inaction, what about the consequences of our actions? What we don’t consider is the consequences of our actions in a faith-based sense, that might speak to the evangelical Christians who reject climate change. Let me explain. Christians, and well, religious people of all faiths, usually put a high value on the idea that actions have consequences. If you commit certain unrepentant acts, you may pay the ultimate price of divine punishment, eternal damnation. So if Christians preach that…Read On…